What is the NUMBER ONE position to win an election?

A) Capitalism requires some poverty, requires some unemployment, to keep wages low.
B) Much of the country believes that, if you provide funds for people at the bottom, they'll get to like it there. They genuinely believe that making poverty "too comfortable" will stop people trying to do better.
C) Much of the country has been trained to resent anyone getting anything at all in welfare, has been trained to view a penny spent in welfare as a dollar stolen from them personally.
D) Much of the country still thinks in Dickensian terms, that the poor are poor because of some fault of their own, because they drink or take drugs or "don't have the habit of work" (our demonically evil DWP Sec).
E) Politicians need votes, that's true. But they need money even more so. Money buys media and media buys votes. Manipulating the masses is not difficult, not when you have limitless media. And the SCOTUS have now legalised outright bribery, giving politicians every reason to suck up to the money. And the politicians are too in love with capitalism, moralising and their own power to ever do anything about it. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed the bill guttign welfare, essentially saying that if you can't find a job within an arbitrary time limit, we'll let you starve.

I grew up poor. Being disabled (I'm severely mentally ill and physically crippled), I'm still poor. And I have heard all the excuses, all the moralising, all the resentment. I';m for a national minimum guaranteed income but it'll take a real, blood-in-the-streets revolution before the PtB let that happen.

This has all happened before and it will all happen again. It's the fate of all superpowers. It happened to us (the British) and it will happen to you. And unless there's either a world war or a real revolution, nothing will change.

"Much of the country has been trained to resent anyone getting anything at all in welfare"... so I guess you are directing that at the 99% of US?

If you make $200K a year, four kids, a mortgage, two cars and have cable tv... you are still in the 99% -- and you are BEING RIPPED OFF by the 1%!

You have to be a BILLIONAIRE to be in the 1%.


Facts and Figures!

The 1 percent has 35.6 percent of all private wealth, more than the bottom 95 percent combined.

The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

In 2010, 25 of the 100 largest U.S. companies paid their CEO more than they paid in U.S. taxes. This is largely because corporations in the global 1 percent use off shore tax havens to dodge their U.S. taxes.

Between 1983 and 2009, over 40 percent of all wealth gains flowed to the 1 percent and 82 percent of wealth gains went to the top 5 percent. The bottom 60 percent lost wealth over this same period.

The world’s 1 percent, almost entirely billionaires, own $42.7 trillion dollars, more than the bottom 3 billion residents of earth.

Between 2001 and 2010, the United States borrowed over $1 trillion to give wealthy taxpayers with incomes over $250,000 substantial tax breaks, including the 2001 Bush era tax cuts.

The 99 percent has seen their national share of income decline from 91 percent in 1976 to 79 percent in 2010. The share of wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent declined from 19.1 percent in 1962 to 12.8 percent in 2009.

The median net worth of white households in 2009 was $113,149, over 20 times the median net worth of African American households ($5,677) and 18 times that of Hispanic households ($6,325).

In 2010, average CEO pay for an S&P 500 company was $10.8 million, a 27 percent increase over 2009. The gap between CEO and average U.S. worker pay is 325 to 1, up from 42 to 1 in 1980.

The corporate 1 percent dominates the lobbying for federal and state policies. In the last 30 years, the ranks of official lobbyists have exploded. In 1970, there were 5 registered lobbyists for every one of the 535 members of Congress. Today there are 22 lobbyists for every member.

I'm not making $200k. I'm barely making $15k because I'm disabled and reliant on benefits (British version of welfare).

Like some how you don't have anything in common with the rest of the 99%.

Talking about a defeatist attitude... how many more percent of the majority do YOU need to get ready to take action? 99.5%?

Convince voters to stop backing politicians that favor policies that help BILLIONAIRES and hurt everyone else.

I am looking for activists who are ready to take real action to solve income inequality.

Show them where the money goes! For instance.. corporations that DON'T PAY TAXES (so pay ZERO!), so they can pay their CEOs MILLIONS.

we need to explain to Americans to not want to emulate the rich. Identifying with the rich is the root of the problem.

There is nothing wrong with making a ton of money... but after a BILLION... how many more millions do you really need.

People need to be made aware of how many BILLIONAIRES are on this planet. We will soon see the first TRILLIONAIRE in our lifetime.

The BILLIONAIRES tend to try to make policies to control the rest of "us".

You see how far occupy went...

I'm not prying but your "all we have do is..." sounds like what I used to say in high school.

old enough to have grandchildren.

I think I might be on the wrong blog, I thought this was a forum for solutions, not whiners and pessimists.

"Yes, it is the economy, stupid."


"“The big corporations that are enjoying record-breaking profits - the wealthiest people - are doing phenomenally well. They`re not sitting on their money. They`re putting huge amounts of money into the political process so they get even more tax breaks, and more ability to outsource jobs, more ability to put their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands." -- Bernie Sanders

the gap is between the top 1% and the bottom 90% actually is. Have you seen the studies that show most people think income is distributed much more equally than it actually is. Plus, depending on where you live, if you're in the top 70% in many places you are doing quite well, and if you just don't get how phenomenally much richer the very top, that same one percent, is, and you are bombarded with messages about how everything that's wrong with this country is the fault of those lazy buggers who refuse to work and live off the system, and you truly believe that if you only work harder than you yourself can become fabulously wealthy, then you are not going to vote for someone who seems to want to raise your taxes and give money away to those undeserving slugs who are draining this country of everything good.

Divide and Conquer tactics were created by the 1%. And the 99% falls for every time.